🇧🇬 Bulgarian elections megathread (next up: European and National (?) Parliament 09 June 2024)

[GMantis]

Map of election results by municipalities:



Some observations:

- Though not as immediately clear as last year, GERB has consistently done better in more rural areas (especially where they control what is euphemistically called the "company vote") and worse in larger cities.

-The results in Sofia are quite comparable to the April 2021 election, only with PP in the role of DB. In fact they'd probably have done better if they weren't competing for the same type of voters.

-With the abysmal turnout and the narrow split between the non-minority parties, DPS has won the most municipalities ever. Simultaneously, BSP had its worst result in geographical terms as well as in percentage of votes and rank.

[GMantis]

Is the reason DPS won a lot of municipalities in Montana Oblast but zero in Sliven Oblast despite the latter being just as Romani and much more Turkish (I love Wikipedia) that BSP has much more residual strength in the former just like in all the northwest which lowered GERB's score? And relatedly, why is the northwest the most Socialist area of Bulgaria?

Not really. DPS' vote in Montana Oblast is well above the minority percentage in every municipality (according to the 2011 census, meaning that it's likely higher now, but unlikely to explain such large discrepancies), while it's below that in all municipalities of Sliven Oblast. For example, there were only 21% minorities in Valchedram, but DPS received 57% of the vote there; 16% minorities in Yakimovo, but DPS received 46% of the vote; etc. Meanwhile, in Kotel where ethnic Bulgarians are less than 40%, DPS received just 17% of the vote; in Sliven municipality with 17% minority population, DPS got just 4%. The real explanation is control of voters. Poor and uneducated voters (among which the Romanis are disproportionately represented) are far too often manipulated, bribed or even coerced into voting for whichever party is able or willing to get their votes. The structure of Romani society, which has strong elements of clannishness, means that its even easier to control their vote if you can win over their leaders, which the DPS has managed over the years. And the reason is not, as I thought for a time, that DPS managed to gain the loyalty of these voters by appealing to minority interests - DPS results in local elections in Montana oblast have been abysmal, because DPS wouldn't waste efforts on elections they can't win anyway. As for Sliven oblast, the minority groups there are mainly located in two of the four municipalities - Sliven itself and Kotel. In a large city like Sliven, it's far more difficult to gain exclusive control of voters like that, because there are many competing interesting to control them effectively and a more prosperous economy making pressuring voters more difficult. As for Kotel, DPS is trumped there by a different type of control. Basically GERB, having first seized the local administration, then forced the majority of employers (which aren't that many in a poor municipality like Kotel to align with them, after which there was no significant difficulties in turning out the vote in favor of GERB. This is what I called the "campaign vote" in one of my previous posts. The actual mechanisms of achieving this varies from offering economic incentives to outright threatening employees that they will lose their jobs if they don't support the correct party. These dark blue municipalities which sprang out of nowhere on election maps are just the most visible part of a huge distortion of the democratic process and one of the main reasons GERB continue to be nearly unbeatable despite their dubious at best record.

As for the northwest, there are multiple reasons why it is (or rather was) the most Socialist area in Bulgaria. Some of these are historical. The northwest was the main core of the uprising the Communist Party staged in 1923 and consequently suffered the worst reprisals after the uprising was quelled. As as a consequence, it was one of the main areas of partisan activity during WWII, which solidified the region as stronghold of the Communist Party. Perhaps more importantly, the northwest has the greatest concentration of voters inclined to back the BSP. It's among the poorest regions in Bulgaria, it's very rural and the population is older than the average - all of these factors skew it in favor of the BSP. Furthermore, it has next to no Turks, so DPS until recently had little success there. Of course, with the passage of time, traditional voting becomes less important, while the consistent inability of BSP to be a real socialist party has gradually alienated its voters. And in even in such an aging region the number of people who vote for BSP solely because of nostalgia for the pre-1989 period naturally decline. Furthermore, DPS has made great inroads with the Romani, who previously either supported BSP or didn't vote at all, weakening the party further.

[GMantis]

Sorry I didn't see your post Beagle before I posted mine. Not that we have a very divergent viewpoint, but I would have tried to reword my answer. And while I certainly appreciate your answer, there are some points with which I can't agree.

Yeah, succinctly put. My mother is from Montana, so I could go on another gratuitous multi page tangent, but I'll just mark three additional factors:
- there is a difference in the make-up of the Roma population in the two districts - Sliven is much more Kalderash, the Montana Roma are mostly Kopanari; the distinction these days is becoming less and less, since both groups have switched to surviving on remittances from family making their living in Western Europe. But the thing is, the Roma vote in Montana is less uniform for DPS, however it is much more socially acceptable for ethnic Bulgarians to vote DPS there. You get villages without any Roma (or Turkish) inhabitants voting DPS in the Northwest, which would be unthinkable anywhere else in the country.

The Romani voters in Sliven oblast went over en mass to GERB after voting DPS for many years so I don't think there is really much of a difference in their outlook from those in Montana. As for Bulgarians voting massively for DPS, I have my doubts - though of course I won't dispute your personal observations. Still, from the rather cursory check I made it seems that DPS is heavily concentrated in exactly those villages which have a large Romani population. And many Romani don't identify their ethnicity in censuses anyway.

- chicken or egg situation, of course, but GERB have less mayors and local influence in Montana region, which makes it harder for them to organize a machine vote there. By comparison, they are in total control of Sliven.

The problem with this argument is that GERB is very much in control in many of these municipalities as well. The mayors of Yakimovo and Brusartsi, which both had over 40% votes for DSP, are from GERB from example. DPS meanwhile has next to no influence in the oblast - no mayors, no control of municipal councils. Which is why I question the theory of many ethnic Bulgarians voting for them - if they don't control the municipalities, how would they "persuade" so many to vote for them?

- Brezovo in the center of the country, with a population of 6170 (a decrease of 16% between the 2011 and 2021 census) - a rural, mountainous place without any tourism, mining or significant industry. The municipal center has a population of 1610, which is positively metropolitan in comparison with...

No, Brezovo's actually in the middle of the Thracian plain (see map) - probably the most prosperous agricultural region in the country. I think the real reason for its long support for BSP was that it was a hotspot of partisan activity in WWII.

- Treklyano in the west of the country, with a population of 434 (a decrease of 32% (!) between the 2011 and 2021 census) - a rural, mountainous place without any tourism, mining or significant industry. The municipal center has a population of a 195. It is home to 7 of the municipality's total of 8 (not a typo) children aged between 0 and 5. Given that the municipal council is 11-member-strong and that each municipality has at least 16 required employees, about 10% of the population are actually directly employed in governing or administrating Treklyano. This is the smallest municipality in Bulgaria and there is nothing justifying its continued existence.

Certainly. The problem is that no municipality has ever been abolished(Srednogorie was dissolved by partitioning it into six municipalities, which is probably not what you had in mind).  In fact the trend has been exactly the opposite. Since the fall of communism, when the opinion of the people began to be taken into account, 16 new municipalities have been created, some consisting of a single town - all due to popular demand. I'm certain that no one but the actual inhabitants of Treklyano would be more adamantly opposed to their municipality being abolished and they have good justification for that. As bad as the demographic and economic situation is there, it would decline even faster without it being a separate municipality. For example, Treklyano has a basic school, which it would never be able to justify if it wasn't a municipality center. Without the school, it would likely lose what little remained of their economically active population.

[GMantis]

Some breaking news in the past hours - the Radev-appointed head of one of the security services submitted an urgent report how the integrity of the vote by machine is being compromised. Apparently a PP-DB deputy minister of electronic government had clandestinely collected the system code which was used to generate the cryptographic hash. At this hour all non PP-DB parties are howling in outrage, demanding the cancellation of vote by machine, if not outright postponing the election, the arrest of the deputy minister in question, the resignation of the minister(s) and/or prosecuting the deputy minister/the minister or the entire government for treason.

Now, how exactly the vote will be compromised remains unexplained, since the machine prints out the voters' choice and they can - presumably - see if it suddenly prints out a PP-DB ballot instead of a Vazrazhdane one. In the 3 elections the machines have been used so far, while they have been other issues, afaik there has never been an instance where a voter has claimed that the printout differs from their actual choice. Counting the votes for the past two elections has meant counting the printouts.

I'd be inclined to agree with you if it wasn't for the hysterical reaction of PP-DB at the decision by the Electoral Commission. Even the slightest irregularity would make the legitimacy of the election questionable and this is a significantly worse case (the deputy minister certainly should be prosecuted for his blatant violation of election laws), so it would be interest of every political party to suspend machine voting until all suspicions can be cleared up. So why is PP-DB so adamant at risking the integrity of the elections for the minimal benefits of machine voting? Why so much opposition to investigating this matter -  the prime minister refused to even publish the report of the security services? Altogether this behavior doesn't exactly put them in a favorable light, to put it mildly.

A plausible method of manipulating votes that I've heard suggested is that by controlling the machines one could find out the exact time a vote has been cast, thus allowing voters to be linked to be identified (since there are cameras in the voting sections). Subsequently voters can be cajoled into voting for the "right" party by making it known that their votes can be identified.

Currently the electoral commission is in an urgent meeting and I fully expect them to cancel the vote by machine and move to all paper ballots. Paper ballots, of course, have the distinct advantage of being easy to invalidate and have been used so massively in the past local elections, where fewer votes make the difference, with some places reporting 30% or more of invalid votes. So this will be rather convenient for GERB and DPS.

While invalid voting is lower with machine voting, invalid voting was not particularly high with paper voting. For example, it was around 2% in the last election held using mainly paper ballots (April 2021) and with a tendency to decline (from around 6% in 2017). The much higher percentage of invalid votes at local elections may well be due to the specifics of the more complex voting system at local election and so unlikely to be improved by machine voting.

[GMantis]

I'd be inclined to agree with you if it wasn't for the hysterical reaction of PP-DB at the decision by the Electoral Commission. Even the slightest irregularity would make the legitimacy of the election questionable and this is a significantly worse case (the deputy minister certainly should be prosecuted for his blatant violation of election laws), so it would be interest of every political party to suspend machine voting until all suspicions can be cleared up. So why is PP-DB so adamant at risking the integrity of the elections for the minimal benefits of machine voting? Why so much opposition to investigating this matter -  the prime minister refused to even publish the report of the security services? Altogether this behavior doesn't exactly put them in a favorable light, to put it mildly.

A plausible method of manipulating votes that I've heard suggested is that by controlling the machines one could find out the exact time a vote has been cast, thus allowing voters to be linked to be identified (since there are cameras in the voting sections). Subsequently voters can be cajoled into voting for the "right" party by making it known that their votes can be identified.

Hogwash.

I grant you that no plausible reason has been stated so far why the deputy minister in question needed to collect the system code clandestinely. However, I find the PP-DB response rather justified in the face of allegations of treason (Kostadin Kostadinov), coup (Slavi T Trifonov), election theft GERB parliamentary leader Atanasova, among others and fraud (too numerous to mention). After all, in a party that represents the majority of the IT sector in Bulgaria, people were understandably miffed that somehow a copy of the source code was implanted with magical powers, given that the source code is given to all the parties participating in the elections for examination. It is precisely the incompetent speculation that infuriates them so much, since nobody has presented anything even remotely resembling a technically coherent explanation how the alleged fraud is supposed to occur, other than 'the machine prints out PP-DB receipts without corresponding input' - which, even for the depths that Bulgarian conspiratorial thinking plumbs, is too stupid to discuss.

I also don't see any plausible method of manipulating the votes (the scenario I suggested is certainly far-fetched). But it's not at all justified for the government to react to a legitimate investigation by the security service on such a vital matter as election integrity as if it were a conspiracy against the government. Especially when they don't actually have good arguments to counter DANS' claims. As you yourself say, there's no plausible explanation for the deputy minister's actions. And why refuse to publish the report of the investigation (which apparently contains more serious allegations than just copying the code)? If the report is manipulated, why not explain how it's manipulated rather than hide it from the public? And all of this to protect a very recently introduced method of voting that has hardly any benefit and without which elections were held without any significant problems for thirty years. Basically, the government are doing a very good impression of acting guilty even if they're innocent, which of course has the effect of raising suspicion against them. Certainly the opposition may have gone overboard in their reaction, but it's hardly unexpected with such a golden opportunity before them.

Although I do not practice criminal law, I would be happy to discuss art. 169 of the Bulgarian Penal Code and where you see the criminal activity by the deputy minister, but maybe this discussion will be too arcane for this forum.

I'm not a lawyer, but I have the distinct recollection that attempting to violate the law is also prosecuted. Whether what he did counts as an attempt to interfere with elections is certainly debatable, but it's definitely something that should be investigated. At the very least he should resign, since even if he had no malign motives, he violated the electoral regulations in a way that compromised the security of the elections.

While invalid voting is lower with machine voting, invalid voting was not particularly high with paper voting. For example, it was around 2% in the last election held using mainly paper ballots (April 2021) and with a tendency to decline (from around 6% in 2017). The much higher percentage of invalid votes at local elections may well be due to the specifics of the more complex voting system at local election and so unlikely to be improved by machine voting.

Well, thank you for proving my point. After all, the present paper ballot form has been exactly the same since the 2019 local election - with the parties listed in a column to the left with squared number boxes starting from 1, and the preference votes in two or three rows to the right, with rounded number boxes starting from 101. Are you really suggesting that having 15% *nationwide* invalid votes in the 2019 locals, compared to 2% in the parliamentary election two years later is down to ballot design? Did the voters of previously mentioned Brezovo (where BSP lost the election for the first time since 1991) get that much more competent so that the invalid votes fell from 1,028 (28.95% of the total) in 2019 to 121 (4.02% of the total) in the parliamentary election? Why would Borovan get 1,071 invalid votes (30.42%) in 2019 and 109* (4.6%) in 2021?

I agree that the discrepancy isn't due to the ballot design. However, it's also not due to the voting method - the April 2021 election still overwhelmingly used paper ballots. Therefore, the only plausible conclusion is that the type of election was the reason for the discrepancy (for example, the more complicated elections could lead to voter confusion), meaning that it's not unlikely that voting by machine could lead to significant invalid voting as well.

[GMantis]

Exit poll for Sofia mayoral race:

Vasil Terziev (PP-DB-SS) - 38.8%
Vanya Grigorova (BSP) - 19.1%
Anton Hekimyan (GERB-SDS) - 17.0%
Deyan Nikolov ("Revival") - 7.1%
Vili Lilkov (KOD) - 5.3%
Ivaylo Valchev (ITN) - 2.9%
Radostin Vassilev (independent) - 2.6%

So GERB's TV trumpet candidate embarrasses himself and likely gets locked out of the runoff, overtaken by the BSP which isn't in its best shape at the moment, especially not in Sofia. And PP-DB actually gets a...decent result given the circumstances?

It's BSP that had the greatest improvement, since they got just 7% in Sofia at the parliamentary election. Of course part of that is Grigorova's personal popularity, but they've done well in the election for the municipal council (about 13% according to the exit polls).

[GMantis]

Indeed, BSP did well (though I reckon they wouldn't have had a chance to reach the runoff if GERB had a good candidate?). I was actually wondering what makes Grigorova so popular, is it just being charismatic in contrast to the other candidates?

First of all, she's an independent figure that hasn't been involved with the unpopular BSP. Second, she's been a somewhat notable trade union activist and leader in several popular causes (for example demonstrations against shale gas exploration) and stands apart from other candidates in her outspoken left-wing views.

[GMantis]

Good work summarizing the election results!

Vazrazhdane have nominally gained the previously mentioned Borovan municipality in Northwestern Bulgaria. However, the mayor-elect is the GERB candidate from 4 years ago, who did not run on the formal GERB line due to a paperwork mix-up, but still was endorsed by them.

As you may recall, Borovan was mentioned in connection with the 30% invalid votes there. The 3-term incumbent (nominally SDS and broad 'Old Right' coalition, in practice DPS) went to one of the precinct commissions in the process of counting the results and began giving them instructions on which ballots to accept and which to reject as invalid. However, she overlooked that the vote counting process is livestreamed nowadays. Upon observing this on the web, the challenger's goons concerned supporters stormed the school, trying to break down the door of the room where the commission was counting and entered into fistfights with the policemen trying to stop them. In the end, Borovan has just about 25% invalid votes in this election.

I appreciate the (now ex-)mayor's commitment to proving why, exactly, machine voting is preferable in such locations.

It seems rather that the GERB mayor candidate switched parties at the last moment, taking nearly all of the candidates for the municipal council with him in the process. Probably explains why Vazrazhdane won 48.7% of the council vote in that municipality and GERB won just 1.1%.

Nice map, though I wonder why they've colored Sofia-oblast in this marking. Or any marking really since that oblast doesn't actually have a oblast city.

[GMantis]

We are heading into uncharted waters constitutionally, as under the amendments adopted in late 2023, parliament shall no longer be dissolved and the president no longer has free choice of caretaker PMs and ministers. Instead, the caretaker PM needs to be selected from a very short list of public officials - who at present are almost all GERB appointees - and then the PM-designate will select his or her own choice of ministers.

Given the general tomfoolery, it is not impossible that all the officials on the list will decline to serve, in which case nobody has the faintest clue what is supposed to happen. However, chances are that one of the GERB-ers will in fact be appointed. The other potential issue is that DPS would very much like the two elections to be held on separate dates - their constituents in Turkey are not allowed to vote in the Euro elections and, given that they have extensive 'donor vote' systems in place, a 2-in-1 election can throw a wrench in their machine. Given the number of witting and unwitting helpers DPS has, it is possible that the parliamentary election is held on either 02 June or 16 June, taxpayers be damned.

It's rather satisfying (not to mention funny) to see PP-DB's inane constitutional reform rebound back on them...

* having 3 March as the biggest national holiday is seen by some as a servile sop to Russia, as this is the date of the Russo-Ottoman armistice which brought about the liberation of Bulgaria, but:
- had absolutely no input by Bulgarians in its contents and little in the war which brought it about
- never actually produced any effect

Both of these arguments are wrong, but more importantly they even miss the point of Bulgaria's national holiday. The idea was never to venerate a failed treaty (except indirectly as a symbol of Bulgaria's ideal borders) but rather to recognize it as the dividing line between a centuries long foreign oppression and a liberated Bulgaria. In that sense, the 3rd of March is just as much a commemoration of the war that preceded the treaty and which is the only reason Bulgaria exists today (and a war in which Bulgarian volunteers certainly played an important role, contrary to argument one).  It's why the attempt to change the national holiday is (and likely will remain) a fringe movement and why far more people consider this attempt little more than trying to adapt to the current anti-Russian politically correct position.